Basic Goals and Accomplishments

The external posture of South Korea in general, and toward North
Korea in particular, began a new chapter in the 1980s. While retaining
its previous goal--enhancing political legitimacy, military security,
and economic development by maintaining close ties with the West--South
Korea greatly expanded its diplomatic horizons by launching its
ambitious pukpang chongch'aek, northern policy, or Nordpolitik.
Nordpolitik was Seoul's version of the Federal Republic of Germany's
(West Germany) Ostpolitik of the early 1970s. Although the policy's
origins can be traced back to 1973 under Park, it was greatly
invigorated by Roh.

Seoul's Nordpolitik was designed for a number of rather ambitious but
initially ill-defined objectives. Seoul's basic dilemma in its
Nordpolitik appeared to be how to reconcile its traditional ties with
the West with its new opportunities in the East. First, policymakers
felt that their economic and military reliance on the West was
excessive, mendicant, and too lengthy. Seoul sought to correct this
situation by establishing its own self-reliant global posture. This
desire to be less dependent became particularly acute as Seoul's Western
allies greatly improved relations with Eastern Europe, the Soviet Union,
and China.

Second, Nordpolitik was designed to expand and diversify trade
relations on a global scale to cope with increasing trade protectionism
from the United States. Intentionally or not, the policy aroused
anti-Americanism. Ironically enough, the rising anti-United States
feeling was accompanied by increasing demands for economic and political
democracy, culminating in the Kwangju incident in May 1980.

Finally, Nordpolitik involved the pursuit of wide-ranging relations
with socialist countries and contacts and dialogue with North Korea. It
had often been observed that political leaders in P'yongyang and Seoul
utilized their confrontational postures to sustain their political
legitimacy. Claiming that P'yongyang's response had been far from
satisfactory, Seoul's policymakers solicited assistance and cooperation
from P'yongyang's socialist allies to induce and persuade P'yongyang to
become more accommodating. Yet Seoul's success in improved relations
with P'yongyang's socialist allies had not resulted in substantially
improved relations with P'yongyang by 1990. In fact, for the short term,
Seoul might have even aggravated its chances for improved relations with
P'yongyang by having improved its relations with North Korea's socialist
allies--and raised the question of whether Nordpolitik was primarily
designed to confront and compete with P'yongyang. Thus far, Nordpolitik
clearly demonstrated the limited power of P'yongyang's socialist allies,
particularly Moscow and Beijing, vis-à-vis the extremely self-reliant
North Korea. In reality, Seoul may have grossly underestimated
P'yongyang's firmly established independence.

On the whole, however, Nordpolitik was successful, and Seoul's
accomplishments could be readily observed in sports, trade, and
diplomacy. The 1988 Seoul Olympics was a major catalyst for Nordpolitik.
It was the first Olympic Games in twelve years not marred by a
bloc-level boycott and had the highest participation ever--159 nations
and more than 9,000 athletes. Seoul gained new global recognition and
visibility as more than 3 billion people around the world watched the
Games being televised live.

Had it not been for the North Korean bombing of KAL 858 over the
Andaman Sea in November 1987, Seoul might have been more willing to
reach out to P'yongyang. While the much-feared and predicted North
Korean misbehavior over South Korea's staging of the Olympics did not
materialize, Seoul probably was relieved by P'yongyang's absence from
the games.

Seoul's international trade record has been impressive. While
encountering, along with other newly industrialized nations, mounting
trade friction with the United States and other major markets, Seoul
emerged in the late 1980s as the world's tenth-largest trading nation.
Economic reforms and the open-door policies of socialist countries,
coupled with their recognition of Seoul's economic growth, pushed
economic trade and cooperation between South Korea and socialist
countries into full swing.

Perhaps Seoul's most impressive success was in diplomacy. Literally
implementing the 1988 Olympics slogan, "From Seoul to the World,
and from the World to Seoul," by the beginning of 1990 South Korea
had established diplomatic relations with 133 countries, and had 138
diplomatic missions, including representative offices and a consulate
department in Moscow. Conversely, North Korea had diplomatic relations
with 102 countries and 85 overseas missions. An impressive number of
young South Korean diplomats were trained in the West and actively
implemented Nordpolitik. These diplomats were also supported by the
aggressive worldwide market diversification programs of South Korea's
big business establishments, the chaebol, and by an
increasingly large number of overseas South Koreans, many of whom become
salespersons of South Korean products.

After Roh's inauguration in February 1988, Nordpolitik was
particularly invigorated. In a July 7, 1988, statement primarily aimed
at insuring the success of the Olympics, Roh unveiled a six-point plan
to ease forty years of bitter confrontation between Seoul and P'yongyang
and to clear the way for peaceful unification of the divided peninsula.
In the afterglow of the Olympics, Roh made his diplomatic debut as the
first South Korean president to address the United Nations (UN) General
Assembly, on October 18, 1988. Roh's speech called for a six-nation
consultative conference to discuss a broad range of issues concerning
peace, stability, progress, and prosperity in Northeast Asia. Pledging
unilaterally never to use force first against North Korea, Roh proposed
to replace the existing 1953 armistice agreement with a peace treaty.